User interviews: yay or nay?

The more feedback you get, the better insight you have. But be careful who you pick for your interviews so you don't get biased answers, which can drive you and your product to address a tiny portion of the market. Unless that market is super rich and willing to pay super high margins.

Conducting user interviews is essential for gaining valuable insights into user perspectives and adjusting your product's solution accordingly.

Hey Gabriele, I'm the founder of Hellooo.io. It's a tool to help product and research teams analyze their user interviews. About your first question: What do you guys think of user interviews? Obviously, I will say they are important in order to gain unbiased insight on how your users behave and feel in a specific situation. Usually, what we see among the UXR community is to do 8–10 interviews on a very specific part of the product. And between 30 to 80 for founders willing to launch a new product. About your second question: How do you prepare for it? >> Define a clear goal. ❌ Don’t try to raise every pain or opportunity that the user faces. ✅ Focus on 1 or 2 areas you want to learn and dig very deep. Your goal is to: -get to the root cause of their pain N°1, -to understand how they behave with your product. -to identify for what reason Not to unveil their pain N°15 >> Recruit users manually. ❌ Don’t try to automate recruiting in-app from day one. Start small. ✅ Knock on CS’ and sales’ doors to get an introduction with users that might help you achieve your goal. Users are not reachable by email. ⇒ cold-call >> Write down the 3 or 4 questions you want to answer. No more. ❌ Don’t prepare 15 questions, you might lose focus on the discussion. ✅ Select the most important ones and dig deep. You want to create a friendly and natural discussion with your user. Ask open-ended questions and follow-up with the WHYs and HOWs. >> Cherish awkward silences and listen. ❌ Don’t try to fill in the blanks. ✅ Wait 5 seconds when you think the user has finished talking. 5 seconds might seem long. But you want them to fill in the blanks for you, so you can learn. You shouldn’t speak more than 30% of the time. >> Record the interview. ❌ Don’t think that you can remember everything. You can’t. Like everyone else. ✅ Pick the simplest tool integrated into your workflow and test it first. Rewatch each of your first interviews the day after. It will be time-consuming at first but you will understand how much value you missed during the interview. >> Invite someone to take notes for you. ❌ Don’t think you can properly take notes and engage in a good conversation at the same time. ✅ Pick someone involved in the delivery. No one is available? ⇒ Take notes when you rewatch the recording. IMO, 5% of people know how to take proper notes when leading an interview It's more complicated than we think. Pro tip: timestamp in your notebook key moments so you can review them with the recording. >> Take a 15-minutes buffer after the interview. ❌ Don’t try to be busy with back-to-back interviews. ✅ Wrap up the key insights while they're warm in your head. Start with these notes when you rewatch the interview. >> Summarize the interview with facts. ❌ Don’t jump too quickly to conclusions. ✅ Your notes must be synthetic and evidence-based. Biais with what kills products. >> Share this knowledge